Deadly Texas Tornado Seemed More Chaotic Than Most

Image from Val and Amy Castors' live stream as they
drove in Matador, Texas immediately after a 
powerful tornado passed through. 

 Maybe it's because of the wide availability of immediate social media images, but the tragic tornado that struck the small town of Matador, Texas seemed especially chaotic and scary. 

The tiny town of about 570 residents was slammed Wednesday by a huge tornado coming in from the north. The storm killed four residents and left 10 others injured. Most of the western half of Matador was leveled.

The twister was wrapped with a thick curtain of torrential rain and hail, making the whole thing seem especially apocalyptic. 

The National Weather Service office in Lubbock, Texas said the parent thunderstorm developed explosively north of Matador and soon produced the tornado that trashed the town. A post-storm investigation revealed the tornado was a strong EF-3 with top winds of 165 mph.

The tornado was about a quarter mile wide and traveled 9.4 miles. Honestly, it was just badly located. 

The tornado had to be intense. The engine of a car was torn out of the vehicle and entire houses and buildings were leveled. Grass was scoured out of fields.

As a side note, I'm a little perplexed by whether people on Twitter upset and angry that the Matador tornado didn't get a higher rating.  Tornadoes are rated from EF-0 to EF-5, with EF-5 being the most intense -and rare.

The critics say they think the damage warranted an EF-4 or EF-5.  But the National Weather Service office in Lubbock worked with Texas Tech University National Wind Institute to estimate tornado wind speed based on structure damage in Matador. 

Of course, the rating doesn't really matter to the people in Matador who had to deal with the twister. 

 Adding to the chaos was large hail that accompanied the huge storm. Hailstones were as large as 4.5 inches in diameter, or about the size of a grapefruit. 

Video taken just as the tornado was leaving Matador appeared to show breaks in the clouds and winds and rain diminishing. That's pretty common in the moments immediately after a tornado passes.

But that was only a very brief interlude. Within perhaps two minutes, another supercell thunderstorm  intense hail and blinding, wind driven rain arrived just as rescuers began attempts to pull people from the wreckage. That turn of events is rather unusual and made the aftermath all the more hellish.

The second storm finally left Matador around 10 p.m, around two agonizing hours after the tornado hit. 

 Large tornadoes are common in the Texas Panhandle, but it's rare for two twisters within a month, never mind a week, to cause deaths in the region. 

A twister hit Perryton, Texas on June 15, killing three people and injuring about 50 others. 

The four deaths in Matador were the most from a single Texas tornado since 2015.

The Texas Panhandle has vast tracts of open land sparsely dotted by small towns and two larger cities, Amarillo and Lubbock.   t's very easy for a tornado to travel ten miles in the Texas panhandle without hitting anything important. So the Matador tornado was very bad luck. 

This isn't the first time a destructive tornado marauded through Matador. A twister in May, 1984 destroyed about 30 homes in Matador. 

Video: KWTV storm chasers followed the tornado into Matador, and were stunned to see the damage when they arrived in town. Very dramatic video. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that: